Facebook: Celebrate Your Birthday Every Day

Since Facebook's inception and rapid ascent to global prominence, many users have doubtlessly experimented with ways to play practical jokes on their friends or to get a certain message across, depending on their reasons for using the social networking site. One simple yet highly amusing method has been for a user to change their birthday periodically in order to repeatedly generate the massive flood of greetings left on their walls from well-meaning "friends". All that is required to pull this off is a simple profile modification and a sufficient number of gullable and/or forgetful friends. Due to Facebook automatically displaying birthday notifications on every friend's homepage, this can also be a highly effective way to generate clicks on your profile and attract attention, even if some people don't write on your wall or actually see through your little ruse.

To test out this practice, founder of Colnect conducted a small experiment whereby he and an associate entered a fake "Facebook birthday" into their profiles on two separate occasions within a 4-5 week period. One interesting stat he wished to uncover was how many "friends" would obliviously send him birthday greetings on both days. As he observed, his Facebook friends list is a particularly fascinating test group, since it consists of people he has fairly close personal relationships with and those who are entirely virtual connections made to promote his collectors web-site. In the end, he found the results of his skullduggery both humourous and befuddling.



On his original fake birthday, he received a total of 63 birthday wishes on his Facebook Wall and Inbox, while his associate's profile accepted 47 such misplaced greetings only a couple of days following his non-existent celebrations. Perhaps most interesting is that he also received three "Happy Birthday" phone calls from real world friends who believed the information on Facebook, despite having attended his real birthday celebrations only six months earlier. "I didn't realize how forgettable my party was," the chairman of the collectibles web-site quipped. In addition, his 2nd fraudulent Facebook birthday generated 62 well wishes, including 26 repeat offenders from the first day barely one month prior, while the second time around his associate's profile received 57 greetings and 17 duplicate wishers from before.

Although the direct ramifications of this may be trivial, it does perhaps illustrate a tendency of users to automatically accept information displayed on Facebook as absolute fact, even when contrary evidence is readily available (in the cases of those who wished the same person "Happy Birthday" twice within a matter of weeks and his real world birthday party attendees). Savvy Facebook users and spammers could easily utilize this fact to manipulate others for far more cynical purposes. It also brings up the question as to why Facebook lets its members change their birthday an infinite number of times, given that by definition it's a static piece of information. While it's understandable that someone could lie or mistakenly enter an incorrect birthday when they first registered and wish to correct this, allowing users to alter their birthday on multiple occasions seems to be opening the door to such blatant shenanigans.

So what's your opinion on this? Should FaceBook limit the ability to modify one's birthday?

Colnect's PhoneCards Catalogs Exceeds 222,222

Colnect's phonecards catalog, which already was the largest in the world, has continued to grow and now features over 222,222 cards from 229 countries. This means that over 22,222 phonecards have been added to the site in roughly the last 3 months (since our last milestone), a reflection of the dedicated efforts made by our many volunteer contributors. We would especially like to thank the co-ordinator of the phonecards catalog, Ignacio F López Vico [iflvico], for helping to organize all these additions and ensuring that Colnect's phonecards catalog continues to be as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible.



Brazil continues to lead the way in phone cards added to the catalog, with over 60,000 having been uploaded for Colnect collectors to mark in their "Collection", "Swap" and "Wish" lists. Germany and the United States also have notably significant quantites of phone cards on Colnect at more than 10,000 each. With such a dedicated team of volunteers continually supporting us, the sky is the limit for the future of Colnect's phonecards catalog and the site as a whole. If you would like to contribute in any way to Colnect, please don't hesitate to Contact Us.

Collectors Flock to Manage Their Collections and Swap Lists on Colnect

Colnect's popularity amongst collectors has surged in recent weeks, with site traffic reaching record levels and new members signing up at unprecedented rates! For instance, Colnect received an impressive 5,000 visits yesterday (February 22), whereas only 1 month ago we were setting records with a mere 4,000 daily visits. This indicates a phenominal growth rate and should bode well for our goal of developing an extensive collectors community touching every corner of the globe. The number of new collectors has also smashed all previous records, as 48 new members signed up on February 22 alone while 258 registered for that entire week (both records we plan to break soon).



A key reason behind this exceptional progress is likely our recent overhaul of Colnect's layout to make the entire site more user-friendly, attractive, and easier to navigate. These changes have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from long-term Colnect members and new collectors alike, who have responded by using the site more than ever to meet their collection needs. Some credit also goes to Colnect's volunteer translators and their manager, Ben Ulster, who have done an exceptional job translating pages from the site into 47 languages! These translations are an extremely important long-term project that should one day allow collectors from anywhere in the world to use Colnect in their native tongue. If you would like to contribute to Colnect through translations, catalog additions, or have any other feedback, please Contact Us.

Colnect's TeaBag Catalog Surpasses 3,000 Items

Colnect's tea bag catalog has grown steadily in recent months and now features over 3,000 tea bags from 48 countries. Although it's not among Colnect's largest categories, tea bags have developed a significant community of collectors on Colnect to connect and swap with. We would like to commend the hard work of the tea bags coordinator, Carine De Pauw, whose continued dedication to Colnect has earned her the prestigious 3 stars.



If you are a tea bag collector, feel free to sign up on Colnect and upload items from your collection to the site. The current success and future greatness of Colnect rests on the shoulders of devoted volunteers like Carine and YOU.

Colnect Surpasses 8,888 Collectors!

Colnect has reached yet another milestone today, as more than 8,888 collectors from around the world have registered to take advantage of our unparallaled features. This lucky Chinese number follows months of significantly accelerated growth in both new members and catalog items, trends that bode well for transforming Colnect into one of the world's most popular collectible sites. At its current pace, Colnect should eclipse the prestiguous 9,999 collector mark by the end of March. Colnect has also surpassed the 100,000 page view per day (or 3 million page view per month) plateau, illustrating the site's growing appeal to collectors.




Although progress has been quite impressive, this only represents the tip of the iceberg for Colnect's full potential. We have imminent plans to add new categories such as gift cards, create or improve many more languages, and continue enhancing our existing catalogs. With the help of our many volunteers, Colnect will continue giving collectors an unmatched collection experience and reach even greater heights!

In the long-term, we envision a site where collectors anywhere in the world can register and utilize Colnect entirely in their language of choice. However, this goal will only be achieved with the assistance of volunteers around the world. If you would like to assist Colnect in any way, you are always welcome to Contact Us.

90,000 Stamps in Colnect's Free Catalog for Stamp Collectors

Colnect's impressive stamp catalog has experienced phenomenal growth recently and has now surpassed 90,000 stamps, with over 8,000 having been added in the last 30 days! This remarkable progress was made possible by the dedicated support of our many stamp contributors and collectors, who are selflessly adding and improving items in the catalogs every day for the benefit of every member on this site. Colnect is especially grateful to our stamps coordinator, Fabian Eicke, for his tireless work in organizing these catalog contributions and helping to create an extensive database that all stamp collectors can enjoy.



Although we are pleased with these results, there is still much work to be done. If you have any stamps or other collectibles not yet in Colnect's catalogs, feel free to Contact Us so we can include them. Doing this can help you find an appropriate swap with collectors from around the world while also benefiting the Colnect community as a whole. In particular, we would like to include substantial numbers of stamps from a greater variety of Asian and African countries.

Colnect Unveils Dynamic New Look to Improve Collecting Experience

Colnect is excited to launch a brand new layout that is both prettier and easier to use for collectors! One of the most important changes is a greater emphasis on displaying only the relevant category information for a particular collector, meaning that someone who only collects stamps can easily customize their top menu bar to display only pages important for stamp collectors (i.e.: clicking on a collectors' list will show only those who have stamps). This reorganization has become particularly warranted in recent months with the addition of several new, highly-specialized categories that appeal primarily to niche collectors. In addition, numerous smaller modifications have been made that will make navigating the site more efficient and intuitive, such as checkboxes that indicate when an update is in progress and automatic redirects to item list pages. For a complete list of changes, please see the new Face-lift page.



Creating the new version of Colnect entailed months of meticulous design, experimentation, and consultation with collectors. Although adjusting to the new layout may take some time and there will inevitably be some temporary glitches, we feel that the aforementioned advantages will make this project beneficial for the entire Colnect community in the long-term. Please send us any feedback you may have about these changes so that we can continue working to improve Colnect and make your collection experience more enjoyable.